The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

Feeling like you don’t so much want Google to be able to use your information across products, as they announced yesterday with their new terms of service? For those who have just had enough and want to quit, there are a few steps you’ll need to take to cancel your Google account once and for all.

The Washington Post lays out the clear steps you’ll have to take in order to say sayonara for good.

First of all, you might want create a backup of all the info associated with your account, by clicking over to the “data liberation” area of Account Settings. It might take a long time to assemble all that data, so be prepared to wait.

Then on to closing!

The first steps are easy –¬†make sure you’re signed in, then cruise over to Account Settings on the navigation bar on the top of your Google account, and click on “Services” once you’re there.

Then you’ve got options: You can delete your Google+ account, your Google profile or get rid of all the information from your accounts on Google.

If you choose to just clear out your Google+/Profile, you can select certain services to get rid of. If you choose to wipe your whole Google profile, that will also delete your Google+ account.

Going for the big shebang and deleting your entire Google account means you’ll lose your Web history, Gmail and Google Talk data. Then you’ll have to check off the obligatory boxes saying that yes, you realize you are wiping all that information out, you know you have to pay any pending financial transactions associated with your accounts and that you really, really want to delete your account.

One more password entry and boom, you are done. Time to start a new Hotmail account.